[RADIOLAB FOR KIDS INTRO]

LULU MILLER: Three, two, one. Imagine you grow black and white feathers. And your eyes turn bright ...

JUDE & MO: Red.

LULU: You look peaceful as you ...

JUDE & MO: Float on the water.

LULU: 'Til you dive down, furiously kicking your black webbed feet, to hunt ...

JUDE & MO: Fish.

LULU: Which you stab with your long sharp beak. And then you swim up to the surface again, and as the lake around you grows dark in the night ...

JUDE: You howl.

LULU: [laughs] You have become ...

JUDE & MO: A loon!

LULU: A loon! Now is the part where I make you sing the theme song with me. "Terrestrials. Terrestrials, we are not the worst. We are the ..."

JUDE & MO: Best-rials!

LULU: [laughs] You got it! Terrestrials is a show where we uncover the strangeness waiting right here on Earth. I am your host, Lulu Miller, joined as always by my songbud ...

ALAN GOFFINSKI: Loons make tunes!

LULU: ... Alan!

ALAN: Does that make them looney tunes?

LULU: [laughs] And today, we are talking about the water bird, the diving bird, known as the loon! Now if you've never seen a loon it looks like a really big duck, but it does not sound like a duck.

MO: It's like a whistle howl. It's like you feel kind of scared, but then you're, like, not scared. It's creepy but you don't want to run away.

LULU: Why don't you want to run away?

MO: Because it's like a different language that we just don’t understand. And you want to keep listening.

LULU: Hmm. And we decided to listen in on the world of loons today because of a ...

ALAN: Listener request!

LULU: ... that came to us from ...

MO: Minnesota!

JUDE: Minnesota, St Paul.

LULU: One of the "Twin Cities" of Minneapolis and St Paul, a vibrant midwestern metropolis that is home to people from all over the planet, like Mexico and Somalia and Cambodia and Laos. And these two sisters.

JUDE: I'm Jude.

LULU: She's nine.

JUDE: And this is my little sister Momo.

MO: I am five!

LULU: So you and your mom wrote us the other day that you wanted to learn more about loons.

JUDE: Yeah, we have a whole lot of questions.

LULU: Because see, loons have all of a sudden started appearing everywhere in Jude and Mo's life. I mean, they kind of already were everywhere—the loon is the Minnesota state bird.

JUDE: The soccer team is a loon.

LULU: But recently the loon has also become a sort of mascot of the community's response to something kinda scary that's been happening where Jude and Mo live.

LULU: So I guess I just want to talk for a quick second about what things have been like these past few months. And I wonder, Jude, if you could just describe, like, a little bit about what's going on.

JUDE: We have two kids in my class who are going virtual.

LULU: Meaning those two classmates have started attending school from home, via video chat.

JUDE: Because certain people can’t leave the house or something bad might happen to them.

LULU: And what might happen to them is that they could be taken away by immigration officers, also known as ICE agents, sent by the federal government to go after people that they claim don't have proper permission to be living in the US, although they've also been going after some people who do have all the proper permissions. And so all kinds of kids, especially those with family born in another country ...

JUDE: They don't feel—feel safe to go to school.

LULU: At the height of things, in some schools, up to 50 percent of the students, according to some reports, were staying home.

JUDE: I think that's kind of sad.

LULU: To try to help, Jude and her family have started driving a classmate to school.

JUDE: We're picking them up from the house to bring them to school because their mom can't leave the house to do it.

LULU: And while Jude and Mo haven't felt scared of being taken, because they're white and the ICE officers have been mostly going after people of color, their city has been loud with screams and sirens as the ICE officers have been getting in fights with anyone trying to stop them from taking people away.

LULU: Mo and Jude, this sounds—this sounds scary. How are you guys staying okay?

JUDE: How I usually deal with problems is I take time by myself and I like to imagine, like, make a story, pretend that I am something else entirely.

LULU: Like what?

JUDE: Usually like an animal like a wild cat, like a bobcat or a lynx or a tiger.

LULU: Huh!

JUDE: Even like winged wolves with eagle wings.

LULU: And speaking of winged creatures, the whole reason Jude wanted us to do an episode about loons is because one day a few weeks ago she was in the car with her mom, Natalie, who says ...

NATALIE: We drove by the soccer stadium and we saw the big loon sculpture.

LULU: It's this massive statue of a loon, made of all these metal pieces that sparkle in the light. And its wings are spread wide, its face pointed up to the sun.

JUDE: It looks like not worried. Like, just calm. It does this every day.

LULU: Hmm.

NATALIE: And Jude and I just started talking about how beautiful it is, and it's beautiful even at a time where there's so much darkness and fear in the city. And then we were able to sort of talk about how it's become like a symbol of the resistance.

LULU: The resistance, the people standing up to the immigration officers, the people who love having immigrants in their city, who believe they belong. The loon has become their mascot. There are loons on protest posters, and loon stickers on local businesses that won't let ICE officers in. People are even getting tattoos of loons!

LULU: And why a loon? Like, is there anything about the loon that would make it a good symbol of resistance?

NATALIE: So we look to the loon as something that comes back, you know, every spring.

JUDE: They'll come back even—no matter what, they always come back.

LULU: Hmm.

NATALIE: Yeah. And the people, right? Like, we're showing up for each other even in this dark time.

LULU: Whoa, so they're a—they're a symbol of resilience.

NATALIE: Yeah. And the girls and I talked a lot about how the call of the loon, like how they call each other, it’s what Jude calls a whistle-howl. It's similar to the whistles that a lot of people here are carrying to alert each other of danger.

LULU: So if someone less at risk, like Jude's mom, sees ICE officers coming, she can blow the whistle to alert her neighbors.

NATALIE: Just to say, like, we're here and we're gonna do what we can to protect you.

LULU: Hmm. Just like "Here I am."

NATALIE: Yeah.

LULU: I wonder if that's what the loon call actually means, too?

MO: I don't know!

LULU: [laughs] Fair.

LULU: And that, of course, is why we are here in the first place—because Jude and her family want to find out, they want to get to know the real creature behind the mascot. So that is what we are going to do today, we are going to find out who are loons really? And what superpowers might they have that might inspire people to stand up against forces trying to knock them down? So we gathered up a bunch of loon experts ...

WALTER PIPER: Hi!

LULU: Starting with scientist Walter Piper.

WALTER PIPER: I've spent 33 years studying loons.

LULU: Are you at a computer researching things, or what?

WALTER PIPER: No, I'm in a canoe, paddling towards loons.

LULU: Do you have, like, a favorite canoe snack?

WALTER PIPER: You know those horrible little honey buns that they sell in gas stations?

LULU: Yeah!

WALTER PIPER: I'm infamous for firing down two or three of those.

[chomp chomp chomp]

LULU: Well, I hope you packed your honeybuns for today, Dr. Piper because Mo and Jude ...

JUDE: We have a whole bunch of questions.

LULU: [laughs] Oh! All right! You ready?

WALTER PIPER: Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

JUDE: Okay. Do loons have different calls and what do they mean?

ALAN: [sings] It's time for three loon language lessons! Do you speak my loon-guage?

LULU: [laughs] First up ...

ALAN: [sings] The tremolo.

WALTER PIPER: The tremolo is the famous one.

LULU: Almost sounds like laughter.

WALTER PIPER: The laughter-like call is an alarm call. That's the one most often heard by humans.

LULU: Yeah.

WALTER PIPER: Why do you think humans hear the tremolo call most often?

LULU: Oh, because they're alarmed about us!

WALTER PIPER: Right.

LULU: Next up ...

ALAN: [sings] The hoot!

LULU: That’s sort of like a little baby talk or chatter that loons do when they're up close with their chicks or other family members.

ALAN: Hoot hoot, how's my little baby loon?

LULU: And finally, that famous whistle-howl, which Walter says scientists call ...

ALAN: The wail!

WALTER PIPER: It's the mournful call, or the one that sounds lonely. And it's sort of ironic.

LULU: Because loons usually wail when they are not lonely, when they have a mate!

WALTER PIPER: It's a contact call to inform your mate that I'm over here.

LULU: Huh, a contact call. Is that at all similar to what Jude's mom said the human whistles are saying?

NATALIE: We're here, and we're gonna do what we can to protect you.

WALTER PIPER: Yeah, that's a good parallel. They're telling each other, "Here I am."

LULU: Here I am. Wow! Walter said they will sometimes use that same wail in a very different way, though, as an alarm call.

WALTER PIPER: Given to bald eagles, because bald eagles are, like, the number one enemy of loons.

LULU: Oh! It's saying, "Watch out friends, there's an eagle?"

WALTER PIPER: "Watch out. There's that bald eagle coming over. But also I know you're up there Mr. Eagle. And I see you, the game's up. There's no point in attacking me."

LULU: Whoa, that's brave!

WALTER PIPER: Oh yeah.

LULU: And speaking of the loon's calls ...

MO: Do loons fart?

LULU: [laughs] Thank you, Mo.

MO: [laughs]

LULU: Do loons fart?

JUDE: And does it, like, make bubbles in the water?

LULU: [laughs]

WALTER PIPER: Um, I don't know that I've—I don't think I've ever—I've never seen it. You know, loons poop in the water, so it's easy to see them poop. And when they poop, their poop is white. And so it's like this cloud that explodes behind them. And so the entire lake is like their bathroom. It sounds disgusting. But I don't know about—I don't know about farting. I've never been able to record that. Never tried, I suppose.

LULU: Walter wrote us back later to say he researched it and found that indeed loons do not make flatulent tunes.

ALAN: Thanks for that breaking wind—I mean, news, LoonLoon, I mean Lulu.

LULU: [laughs]

ALAN: Next question.

JUDE: Can they breathe underwater?

WALTER PIPER: No, they cannot.

LULU: But Walter says he can understand why it looks like they might be able to, because ...

WALTER PIPER: They can stay down allegedly as long as five minutes.

LULU: Wow!

LULU: Which is thanks in part to their ...

WALTER PIPER: Super, super strong powerful legs. When we capture them and mark them with leg bands, you know, one thing we have to do is grab the legs, because they're very good at pushing against the water.

LULU: Oh, because their jacked muscle-y legs could, like, kick you?

WALTER PIPER: Well, it's like slapping.

ALAN: Foot slap!

LULU: And Walter said that unlike most birds with light hollow bones, loons ...

WALTER PIPER: They have mostly solid bones. They're relatively heavy.

LULU: Almost like diving weight, which let them go super deep.

WALTER PIPER: Their bodies are better adapted for swimming and diving than for flight.

LULU: How are they on land?

WALTER PIPER: Terrible.

LULU: [laughs]

WALTER PIPER: They're—they're ter ...

LULU: How so?

WALTER PIPER: You can't have it all. You can't have it all, you know? They can't turn fast. They flap like crazy to keep aloft. It takes forever for them to take off.

LULU: Now I'm picturing ...

WALTER PIPER: They can't soar.

LULU: Are they just like huffing and puffing? Are they ...

WALTER PIPER: They're huffing and puffing.

HOPE FLANAGAN: Even if you're not looking up, you can hear a loon fly over you and you'll know it's a loon.

LULU: Why?

HOPE FLANAGAN: You can hear the—fwoop fwoop fwoop fwoop—because they're working so hard.

LULU: This is our second expert.

HOPE FLANAGAN: Hello!

LULU: Hope Flanagan. She is Seneca, originally from New York, but now lives in a community of Ojibwe people, who have made their home on the land we now call Minnesota for hundreds of years—maybe even longer!

HOPE FLANAGAN: "Mang" is how you say "loon" in Ojibwe.

LULU: Maan?

HOPE FLANAGAN: Mang.

LULU: And as a bird lover and storyteller, she's spent a lot of time studying loons. And she is so in awe of how far these not-so-great-flyers can fly that she will follow them.

HOPE FLANAGAN: The loon migrates from this area down to Florida. So I always go down there to see how are they doing, because sometimes that is a really difficult migration.

LULU: Nearly 2,000 miles of huffing and puffing.

HOPE FLANAGAN: So when you see them in Florida, they're mostly gray.

LULU: They've lost feathers.

HOPE FLANAGAN: They change their form.

LULU: Hmm.

LULU: But Hope knows this is not their end, because as Ojibwe stories put it, after a few months down south, migrating birds like the loon ...

HOPE FLANAGAN: Fly through the hole in the sky and bring the seasons back.

LULU: Huh!

LULU: Spring in particular, which of course comes with the birds as they land back in Minnesota.

HOPE FLANAGAN: The birds carry the seasons in their wings.

LULU: Okay, before we spring forward into a quick break, Jude, should we do one more question?

JUDE: Yeah. Why are loons' eyes red?

WALTER PIPER: Why are they red? You know, during the winter loon's eyes are brown.

LULU: Huh!

WALTER PIPER: So the change in eye color is one of many signals in addition to their feathers, that change into bright contrast-y patterns.

LULU: Huh!

WALTER PIPER: That signals a potential mate that hey, this is an adult who's in breeding condition.

LULU: Oh! I'm thinking of it as, like, Valentine eyes. Like, I'm almost picturing red hearts in their eyes saying, "I'm ready! Ready for love!"

WALTER PIPER: Yeah.

JUDE: And does it make everything they see look red?

LULU: Oh!

WALTER PIPER: No, it doesn't.

LULU: Womp womp

HOPE FLANAGAN: There's one story I've been telling a lot of lately.

LULU: This is Hope again, who says the Ojibwe tradition has another explanation for why the loon's eyes are red.

HOPE FLANAGAN: In this particular story ...

LULU: It begins in a land where many birds were living peacefully, until one day, this half-human sort of sneaky spirit shows up called the Trickster.

HOPE FLANAGAN: So he's trying to trick these birds because he's hungry. He's always hungry.

LULU: Oh oh.

HOPE FLANAGAN: So the Trickster is calling on these birds to dance in a circle. They're called a Shuteye Dance.

LULU: He tells them they have to keep their eyes shut, totally closed, as they dance.

HOPE FLANAGAN: And he says, "I want you to sing your song as you dance, and if you open your eyes, your eyes will turn red. And they'll be red for the rest of eternity. People will know that you're somebody who doesn't do what they're supposed to do because you'll have red eyes.

LULU: Oh you'll be marked!

HOPE FLANAGAN: Yeah. So during the story, you know, there's geese and ducks and all kind of water birds, and they're doing their calls and Loon's doing his call. And it gets quieter and quieter in there, so loon gets suspicious because it's getting quieter, right?

LULU: Yeah.

HOPE FLANAGAN: So Loon peeks, and The trickster is breaking everybody's necks to eat!

LULU: [gasps]

HOPE FLANAGAN: So loon rats out the Trickster. He goes, "He's killing us! He's killing us! Fly away! Fly away!"

LULU: As punishment for breaking his rule, the Trickster turns the loon's eyes red. And that's why, according to the Ojibwe legend ...

HOPE FLANAGAN: You can still see the redness of his eyes when you look at the loon today.

LULU: And so to you, is that—it's like it's marked by breaking the rule, but it's by—it's by challenging a dangerous authority. It's by being skeptical and brave, sort of? Is that what you see in the red eye?

HOPE FLANAGAN: You know, I'm a storyteller, right? My job is to tell the story and then you give the message that you need.

LULU: Huh!

HOPE FLANAGAN: I can't tell you what you're supposed to get.

LULU: You can't?

HOPE FLANAGAN: No, no, no, no, no. It's for you!

LULU: [laughs]

LULU: I asked Jude what she makes of this story about the loon's red eyes.

JUDE: As the other birds are focusing on other things, he peeks right? He peeks and warns all the other birds, like, to protect them. Maybe, like, those birds were his friends or something.

LULU: Yeah, like they're different birds, but he's still a part of them like it's his ...

JUDE: Like a community?

LULU: Yeah.

LULU: And whether or not most people in Minnesota know that Ojibwe legend, it does seem like a lot of them in these recent months have been acting like that red-eyed, community-minded loon.

NATALIE: If you drive down the streets during the week, you'll see parents basically at every daycare, every school in yellow vest doing parent patrols.

LULU: That's Jude's mom Natalie again.

NATALIE: Churches are packing up groceries.

LULU: Who started listing off all the ways she's seen her community rising up, from marching and singing in the street in protest, to providing shelter and food and medicine to people who need it.

MO: Yep!

LULU: Even kids are trying to help. There are some writing letters to ICE agents, asking them to consider how what they're doing is hurting people.

NATALIE: I don't know of any other creatures that have that kind of red eye, and they seem like a powerful reminder that we can mobilize and take care of each other.

LULU: When we return from break, Hope will bring us a pretty cool secret loons have to teach us about the very idea of home.

LULU: Terrestrials is back with the loon, a bird that's sleek and black like the night, with speckles of white on its feathers, almost like stars. Which is why for the Ojibwe people, the loon looms large in the universe itself.

HOPE FLANAGAN: In our star stories, you'll see this.

LULU: Okay, you're holding up a chart?

HOPE FLANAGAN: So the "mang" is always in the sky.

LULU: Wait, so there's a constellation that's a loon?

HOPE FLANAGAN: Yes. The loon constellation is right there.

LULU: Whoa!

HOPE FLANAGAN: See that?

LULU: Hope is showing me a map of the night sky with all of these shapes that we know as Orion and the Big Dipper, but in Ojibwe tradition, so many of them are spirits and animals. And the one cluster of stars shaped like a loon?

HOPE FLANAGAN: That's the—the Little Dipper.

LULU: [gasps]

HOPE FLANAGAN: Yeah, the Little Dipper.

LULU: Is a loon!

LULU: The Little Dipper is a constellation that has four stars in the shape of a pot, and three little stars that look like a handle. And the end of the handle is the brightest star, which is also known as the North Star. And that sits, for the Ojibwe, at the end of the loon's tail.

HOPE FLANAGAN: The specific North Star is called Giiwedin-anang. Giiwedin-anang, the going home star, because once you can find that star and you can find the loon constellation, you can find your way home because now you know where north is.

LULU: Aww!

LULU: Speaking of home, Jude and a lot of her classmates wondered ...

JUDE: Where is home for loons during the winter? Like, when they fly away from Minnesota, where do they go?

LULU: And as we heard before break, some go to Florida. And it turns out some go to Louisiana, some to Texas, and some to ...

LEONARDO CHAPA: Hello. Right now I am standing in front of a lake in Mexico.

LULU: ... Mexico! This is biologist Leonardo Chapa who is based in central Mexico.

LEONARDO CHAPA: I am looking at birds. There are many different species of water birds, including duck, egrets, plovers.

LULU: And though he doesn't see any loons at the moment, he has seen them over the years.

LEONARDO CHAPA: Yeah. Like, in the Gulf of Mexico, we have seen them here in San Luis Potosi.

LULU: It's just part of their life cycle. They go back and forth. Home is Mexico. Home is the United States.

LEONARDO CHAPA: And actually on my balcony, there's a migratory bird that visits me every day.

LULU: Hmm!

LEONARDO CHAPA: It's very cool, because the US was my home for 10 years.

LULU: For a season of his life, Leonardo lived in Illinois.

LEONARDO CHAPA: So it's, it's like, oh, there come my visitors from my former home, right? [laughs]

LULU: To the loons, the borders between countries mean nothing. And migrating from one place to another does not mean they do not belong.

LEONARDO CHAPA: They have another home down here, I guess. To get the best of both worlds they just have to survive, right? How can I say? It is like generalist strategy.

LULU: Oh, generalist strategy like we learned about in our coyote episode. Instead of only having one specific skill, generalists have this incredible flexibility and creativity, like how coyotes can survive in mountains hunting prey or in the city, like, navigating busy streets and eating pizza. It's the same with loons. Sure they love their fish but they're also down to eat ...

WALTER PIPER: Things like crayfish, crabs, lobsters.

LULU: Walter again.

WALTER PIPER: Insect larvae, leeches.

LULU: Yuck, but flexible! And loons can survive in freshwater or saltwater, Minnesota, parts of Mexico, Greenland, Alaska. They're scrappy and resilient. And that brings me back to the whole point of this episode: Are loons actually a good mascot for people trying to resist?

WALTER PIPER: Well I mean, loons have long lives, and they have lots of ups and downs in their lives.

LULU: Hmm.

WALTER PIPER: Most of our lives are rollercoasters, right? We have times when we don't—we're not doing so well. And other times when we're doing great. And loons are the same way. They have good times and bad times, and the fact that they just keep picking themselves up and dusting themselves off and going back out there even if somebody's just beating them up, and if their feathers are all torn up and their wing's a little injured, you know, they just kind of hang in. They figure out how to survive, make it to the next day, jump to the next pond and, you know, they know that any one setback is temporary, and that they're going to be able to come back strong the next year and the world will look very different.

LULU: What I love about what Walter is saying about loons is that they are resilient, but in this scrappy way. There's something almost inelegant about loons. They fall down, they lose their feathers, they turn gray, they can't fly all that well. But they do return. This mascot doesn't have superpowers, so much as something maybe more useful, which is the earthly power of trying however you can—awkwardly, tiredly, clumsily flapping against headwinds. And when you run out of steam, listening for the call of your neighbor.

ALAN: [sings] Here I am. Here I am. Here I am. In the dark you'll hear me calling out through the stillness that echoes the ache in our hearts for the Going Home Star. There you are! Calling out again in defense of an awkward, unwavering hope from afar. We watch for the Going Home Star.

HOPE FLANAGAN: The Going Home Star. Once you can find that star, the Loon Constellation, you can find your way home.

ALAN: [sings] Light the way to a place we feel safe and belong. We call out, find a home in our echoing song. Here I am, calling out, calling out. Come on, flap! Tired wings feel will turn us to spring. If we gaze to the Going Home Star through the darkest night, who knows what the light of the morning may bring? Calling out, calling out. Tired wings will return us to spring. If we gaze to the Going Home Star through the darkest night, This night, who knows what the light of the morning may bring?

LULU: Alooon Goffinski, with harmonies from Natalia Ramirez, and incredible loon howls…from Jude and her classmates. And that is where we are gonna leave it today. Huge thanks to Jude, Mo and their mom Natalie for writing in. Don't forget you too can write in to request that we cover an animal, a plant, a sound, I don't know, anything that happens here on Earth. And if you need any resources relating to immigration and your rights and how to get support or give support, we have linked a bunch of great organizations right here in our show notes. You just can go click on them.

LULU: And another thing you could check out is Hope Flanagan's very cool organization. It's called Dream of Wild Health, and they serve the Indigenous community in the Twin Cities by mending the world through farming, gardening, cooking, storytelling. Again, they are called Dream of Wild Health.

LULU: Terrestrials was created by me, Loon-Loon Miller, with WNYC Studios. The people who told me to make that joke and who produced this episode are Ana González, with sound design by Mira Burt-Wintonick. And if you listen close you can hear piano by Jude! She played piano on one of our music tracks this episode. Thank you, Jude! Sarah Sandbach is our executive producer. Our team also includes Alan Goffinski, Tanya Chawla, Joe Plourde and Natalia Ramirez. Fact-checking by Angely Mercado.

LULU: Support for Terrestrials is provided by the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations and the Templeton Foundation. Thank you! And special thanks to Shannon Heffernan for lending an ear this episode. You can check out her top-notch investigative reporting on how kids and adults are being affected by ICE, over at the Marshall Project. And also huge thanks to Erica Heilman at the podcast Rumble Strip. They have a new episode out about one of the songs being sung in Minnesota. We played it in our episode, it's called "Hold On," and the Rumble Strip episode tells you where it came from, and its beautiful story about how it's traveled. That episode is called "Hold On."

LULU: Oh, that sound means we've got some birthdays to shout, some belated January birthdays, and then also some March birthdays for our Explorer’s Club members. So here we go! January: Allison, Ariel.

ALAN: Cody, Ella, Eli.

LULU: Emily, Harvey, Rosalyn. Henry and also another Henry.

ALAN: Hildy, Lucy, Molly, Prometheus, Santiago.

LULU: And Tallulah. Happy birthday! Now the March ones, which also includes me! Okay, we got:

ALAN: Adelaide, Anna, Avni.

LULU: Calvin, Casmir, Cooper.

ALAN: Desmond, Deana.

LULU: Emil, Evelyn, Everett.

ALAN: Finn, Frans, Hattie, Henri—or is it Henri?

LULU: Isa, Kintu, Lea, Leo.

ALAN: Lucien, Luna, Maeve, Meadow, Mo.

LULU: Olive, Otis, River, Sammy and Stanley.

LULU: If you'd like to join the Explorers Club, and experience off-key singing from me, along with ad-free listening and stuff, go to Terrestrialspodcast.org/join and see if it's for you.

LULU: All right, y'all, spring is coming. Don't forget, next time you find yourself lost in the dark, if you look up, there are seven stars that may be pointing you a way home.

HOPE FLANAGAN: The fact that the loon is posted up in the sky, it's a responsibility that the loon has to carry. You're going to be helping the people, the planets, you know, you've got a responsibility you have to carry. But it's also like an honor.

LULU: See you in a couple spins of this dirty old planet of ours. Bye!

 

-30-

 

Copyright © 2026 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

 

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of programming is the audio record.